After several abortive attempts, the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) is planning to make a fresh bid to revive the plan of setting up Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) compliant chemical, biological laboratories and large animal House in the public-private partnership mode.

“Though with the approval of Planning Commission, the applications were invited for setting up these facilities in PPP mode, yet these could not be sanctioned finally due to technical problems. Despite repeated advertisements and extensions of time for submission of proposals, adequate number of proposals for consultancy of the project was not received. Another attempt is being made to elicit adequate number of proposals,” a senior official of the department said.

The DoP had invited expression of interests to appoint the consultant with April 25, 2011 as the deadline for tenders and then the date was later extended to May 31. But it failed to generate keen interest among the industry. Then the move was virtually dropped. After an year now, the DoP is planning to put out tender again and try to revive the proposal.

The consultant is expected to assess the existing facilities in the country vis-à-vis requirements of pharma industry, gaps if any, and indicate the manner in which this gap could be filled in. Based on such assessment, the agency will draw up schemes for establishing labs or upgrading the existing facilities so as to make them GLP compliant laboratories or Large Animal Houses.

The DoP had planned the scheme to help the companies to comply with the good laboratory practices that has been made mandatory from November 1, 2010. The laboratories were planned to be created in the clusters in different parts of the country.